Keyless Signature Infrastructure® (KSI™) Technology Introduction
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Guardtime Federal, LLC Proprietary Keyless Signature Infrastructure® (KSI™) Technology An Introduction to KSI Blockchain Technology and Its Benefits Executive Summary The use of blockchain technology to provide digital integrity has exploded in financial applications. Widely proliferated blockchain technology consumes significant storage, communications bandwidth and time for each transaction, whereas Guardtime-Federal, LLC provides Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI) that is a blockchain designed for security, scalability and speed. Through the properties of verifiable authenticity, identity of the client, and non-global positioning system-based non-spoofable time; KSI provides provenance, integrity and identity associated with digital assets. This implementation consumes far less storage and bandwidth than widely proliferated blockchain technology and can provide the above defined attributes for thousands of files a second scalable to billions. KSI cryptographically links data assets with immutable properties provided by the KSI infrastructure, and implemented in a KSI signature. KSI promises this additional integrity and authenticity in newly created or already existing data whether on the network, in embedded systems or traversing the cloud. Customers who implement KSI can prove their current and future information systems are in a truthful state and meet business and mission needs with increased security. KSI was designed with considerations for security, scalability, and speed to meet the requirements for a host of complex applications. By integrating KSI into healthcare systems, irrespective of where a digital asset is transmitted or stored, every component, configuration, and digital health record/entry generated by humans or machines can be verified independently in real-time, independent of trusted administrators. KSI provides a truth-based system wherein the need for trust can be completely eliminated. Guardtime Federal, LLC is a small technology company that makes KSI available to the US Federal ecosystem. With KSI, digital assets and their provenance can be authenticated in real- time, anywhere in the world, independent of the service provider. KSI signatures are portable, literally become part of the digital asset, and are used to provide proof of time, identity and authenticity. Verification of digital signature at a future time provides evidence of its integrity. Introduction This paper is divided into three sections. First, the paper will provide a basic description of KSI technology. This description will include an explanation of the logical and mathematical processes as well and the security infrastructure necessary to offer the capability in a fashion that assures integrity of the process. Second, the paper will provide a discussion of how this implementation differs from other blockchain approaches. Finally, the last section will propose examples of how KSI may be useful for healthcare and healthcare-related research. This section will address how KSI can be used to assure integrity of patient records, compliance of personally identifiable information protection standards, provide tamper resistance of telehealth care information, impart authenticity verification into clinical trials reliability, and in healthcare fraud detection and prevention. Guardtime Federal, LLC Proprietary 1 Guardtime Federal, LLC Proprietary Keyless Signature Infrastructure® (KSI™) Technology Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI) technology was initially developed in 2007 with the goal to impart a tag on any digital file that would forever be effective in determining its authenticity. Exploiting a mathematically derived artifact of a file called a hash along with the hashes of other files created in the same time increment, and combining them in a mathematically known manner called a hash tree or a Merkle Tree accomplish this. This process cryptographically links all the artifacts of the files created or modified in that time increment and creates a top root hash that can be used in a proof that shows the contribution of every file. Once this top root hash is determined, it is then combined with the top root hashes from previous time increments in a hash calendar. Combination of all the artifacts for a particular instant in time can be summarized on a publication code. The steps taken in the mathematical sequence of combining the hashes is well- defined and repeatable. The process and path used to move from initial hash to the publication code is defined in a unique digital KSI signature (approximately 2 kilobytes). In this implementation the artifacts from the files in the current time increment are cryptographically linked to all the artifacts of files brought into these processes since it was initiated and a summary is provided in the publication code. This is one instantiation of what has been called a blockchain. To verify the authenticity of any digital file, one must have the file under test. With the hash of the file under test and the signature attributed to the original file, verification is accomplished by using the hash of the file under test as the starting hash and processing it through the Merkle Tree with the data from the original signature and comparing the result to the publication code. There is no mystery to the approach, no puzzles to be discovered, the process follows the published KSI process (the Merkle Tree) using the KSI signature and comparing the result to a published result. If the process generates the same publication code, it is identical to the original file. If it does not, then it is a forgery or an altered version. The top root hashes of every time increment are stored in the KSI infrastructure such that it is always available for verifying signatures. This storage scales at approximately 2 gigabytes per year, scaling with time, not with number of items signed or processed. Note that a hash is a one-way function such that a file can be hashed but there is no mathematical process that allows one to re-create the file from a hash. Once the initial file is hashed, all other processes have no insight into the content of the original file and the file content is not widely distributed. Only the hashed artifacts of the file are widely distributed. This enables anyone to verify the contribution of a hash at a point in time without having to be exposed to the potentially sensitive data in the original file (e.g., personal medical data). The information derived from a KSI signature means the asset’s chain-of-custody information (pedigree), creation time, and authenticity information remains undisputable and is subsequently verified as truth without trusting or solely relying upon an administrator or a shared secret (such as a key or Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) credential). Instead, KSI uses a ‘proof-based’ method to accomplish authentication and our signature is portable across any computing platform. KSI signatures are based on mathematical proofs and keyless cryptographic functions approved by the European Union (EU) and National Institute of Standards (NIST). Guardtime Federal, LLC Proprietary 2 Guardtime Federal, LLC Proprietary KSI addresses the need to prove data integrity and detect changes in data authenticity at rest and in motion. It is a blockchain technology, which provides massive scale data authentication without reliance on centralized trust authorities. KSI forms a unique calendar hash chain (CHC) that is a distributed database across the infrastructure. Records can only be added to the database, never removed, with each new record cryptographically linked to all previous records in time. New records can only be added based on synchronous agreement or ‘distributed consensus’ of the parties maintaining the database. Since records are cryptographically linked, it is impossible for one party to manipulate previous records without breaking the overall consistency of the database. 1. Blockchain Meets Security KSI is designed to provide secure, scalable, digital, signature-based authentication for electronic data, machines and personal information. Unlike traditional approaches that depend on asymmetric key cryptography, KSI uses only hash-function cryptography, allowing verification to rely only on the security of hash-functions and the availability of the history of cryptologically linked root hashes (the blockchain). The KSI blockchain overcomes two of the major weaknesses of traditional blockchains, speed and storage capacity, making it usable at industrial scale. One of the most significant challenges with traditional blockchain approaches is scalability; typically they grow linearly with the number of transactions. In contrast the KSI blockchain scales temporally; it grows linearly with time and independent from the number of transactions. The second significant challenge is time to record an individual transaction. Some refer to this as settlement time for a large number of nodes to witness a transaction often taking many minutes to complete a transaction. In contrast KSI has a straightforward mathematical process that provides signatures on the order of one second, that is once a second generating signature for thousands of client requests. The KSI approach to implementing digital integrity is to provide a secure infrastructure consisting of cores, aggregators, and gateways to create keyless signatures. This infrastructure runs on our Black Lantern Security Appliances that is an integrated hardware and software platform purposely built to mitigate both remote and physical